Robert F Kennedy Jr, the prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is running for president as an independent, announced on Tuesday that his running mate will be Nicole Shanahan. A Silicon Valley attorney and wealthy philanthropist, Shanahan has never held office and has little background in politics.8 hours ago
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Robert F Kennedy Jr, the prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is running for president as an independent, announced on Tuesday that his running mate will be Nicole Shanahan. A Silicon Valley attorney and wealthy philanthropist, Shanahan has never held office and has little background in politics.
- Shanahan, 38, was previously best known in the media as the wife of Google co-founder and tech billionaire Sergey Brin.
- Their divorce in 2021 made headlines after the Wall Street Journal reported that Shanahan allegedly had an affair with Brin’s friend and fellow tech mogul Elon Musk, resulting in a falling out between Brin and the Tesla chief executive.
- Shanahan and Musk denied any affair took place.
In recent months, Shanahan became a major backer of Kennedy’s campaign and bankrolled his controversial Super Bowl commercial that imitated a John F Kennedy campaign ad and caused Kennedy family members to condemn the spot.
- Shanahan donated $4m to the Super Pac behind the ad, telling the New York Times that she saw an opportunity to highlight Kennedy’s candidacy and agreed with his stances on the environment and vaccines.
Although Shanahan has stated that she is not an anti-vaxxer, she told the Times that “I do wonder about vaccine injuries” and suggested that there need to be more conversations about vaccines. Kennedy has repeatedly promoted numerous falsehoods about vaccinations, including debunked theories that link childhood vaccines with autism.
- Shanahan and Brin have a daughter with autism, and Shanahan told People magazine last year that she dedicates around 60% of her time to researching the condition.
- Shanahan has also donated funding to the University of California, Davis’s Mind Institute, which researches autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions. The Mind Institute did not respond to a request for comment on Shanahan’s donation or her candidacy.
In an interview with Newsweek published the same day Kennedy announced Shanahan as his running mate, Shanahan blamed the media for calling Kennedy an “anti-vaxxer” and said that a “Silicon Valley mom” friend told her to do her own research.
- Shanahan and Kennedy discussed her becoming his vice-presidential pick during a dinner party last month, according to the interview.
Before becoming one of Kennedy’s most prominent donors, Shanahan previously donated thousands in campaign contributions to a range of Democratic politicians. Some of the recipients included the California congressman Ro Khanna, the Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, and several fundraising efforts backing Joe Biden for president.
Shanahan grew up in Oakland, in what she has described as a difficult and at times violent childhood that included relying on government welfare and her father being diagnosed with schizophrenia.
- She later attended law school to become a patent attorney and married an investor from the Bay Area, but divorced in 2015.
- Shanahan first met Brin at the Wanderlust yoga retreat and the pair began dating, according to the Wall Street Journal, marrying in 2018.
- Their divorce became the subject of intense media scrutiny both for the alleged affair with Musk, as well as Shanahan reportedly seeking $1bn in a settlement. The divorce was eventually settled in a confidential arbitration.
Many of Shanahan’s public interests and philanthropic donations are emblematic of the wealthy world of Silicon Valley that has come to embrace Kennedy as one of their own.
- She is president of a non-profit that funds a range of causes including reproductive longevity, a field of growing fascination within the tech world, and has pledged to give millions in funding its research.
- In interviews, Shanahan often speaks in Silicon Valley tropes such as meeting her current husband at Burning Man and attending the Hoffman Institute, a weeklong therapy retreat popular with celebrities and tech elites.
During Kennedy’s lengthy announcement of Shanahan’s candidacy, he lauded her as a “technologist” and said that they share the same values and concerns about the country.
“I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people,” Kennedy said.
“I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people,” Kennedy said.
The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Nicole Shanahan as his running mate on Tuesday, elevating a little-known philanthropist and political donor to second-in-command on a ticket challenging President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
Here are three things to know about Ms. Shanahan.
1 She has signaled her support for Kennedy’s vaccine stance.
Ms. Shanahan told The New York Times in February that she had been drawn to Mr. Kennedy in part for his efforts to challenge scientific consensus on matters including vaccines.
Mr. Kennedy and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, have promoted debunked claims about the risks of vaccinations against measles, polio, tetanus, meningitis, Covid and other diseases.
“I do wonder about vaccine injuries,” Ms. Shanahan said last month, while saying she was “not an anti-vaxxer.” “I think there needs to be a space to have these conversations.”
She also praised Mr. Kennedy’s work as an environmental lawyer, though he has become better known for his anti-vaccine activism and his embrace of political conspiracy theories.
“I do think we have an environmental health crisis in this country,” she said. “I do believe Americans deserve clean water. And we can’t achieve that in the current climate of politics.”
2 She has never held elected office.
Ms. Shanahan has been a Democratic donor for over a decade but has never held or run for office. She has spent her career as a lawyer and tech entrepreneur focused on health and environmental research.
She founded and leads the Bia-Echo Foundation, which funds reproductive rights, criminal-justice reform and environmental projects, and previously founded ClearAccessIP, a patent analytics firm.
She founded and leads the Bia-Echo Foundation, which funds reproductive rights, criminal-justice reform and environmental projects, and previously founded ClearAccessIP, a patent analytics firm.
Ms. Shanahan married Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, in 2018, and they divorced last summer. Before that, she worked with the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, which funded a variety of left-leaning organizations.
She contributed $6,600 — the legal maximum — to Mr. Kennedy when he was running for the Democratic nomination last year, before he switched to running as an independent. She also gave $500,000 over the summer to Common Sense, a super PAC backing him. In 2020, she donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, following a donation of $2,800 to Marianne Williamson during the Democratic primaries.
3 She bankrolled Kennedy’s Super Bowl ad.
Earlier this year, Ms. Shanahan gave $4 million to American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy, for the purpose of running an ad during the Super Bowl. She also helped coordinate production.
That contribution covered more than half the cost of the ad, which was nearly identical to one that John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, ran during his 1960 presidential campaign. The remake angered some of Mr. Kennedy’s relatives, who criticized him for using images of — and Democratic nostalgia for — his uncle to promote a campaign that they argued the former president would have rejected.
A co-chairman of the super PAC, Tony Lyons, said last month that Ms. Shanahan had been “the driving force behind the decision” to remake the 1960 ad, after the group had to scrap an earlier ad idea because it showed Mr. Kennedy speaking directly to the camera and could have violated a ban on candidates’ coordinating with super PACs.
That contribution covered more than half the cost of the ad, which was nearly identical to one that John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, ran during his 1960 presidential campaign. The remake angered some of Mr. Kennedy’s relatives, who criticized him for using images of — and Democratic nostalgia for — his uncle to promote a campaign that they argued the former president would have rejected.
A co-chairman of the super PAC, Tony Lyons, said last month that Ms. Shanahan had been “the driving force behind the decision” to remake the 1960 ad, after the group had to scrap an earlier ad idea because it showed Mr. Kennedy speaking directly to the camera and could have violated a ban on candidates’ coordinating with super PACs.
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